Long story, so go grab a beer.
Grew up in a Mopar family, at 1st anyway. Grandad had a 69 New Yorker, 440 hwy king, nobody could pass him. The only child of a single mom, I often rode shotgun in my momma's purple 70 Charger 500, white vinyl top & interior, 383 magnum & a pistol grip 4 speed. Watching her row thru the gears, hearing that big block howl left an indelible mark on my soul at an early age. At least once a week she'd put it into 2nd gear and stand on the loud pedal until it hit 100, then back off of it, "to blow the carbon off the valves". It was her daily driver until '84 when I wrecked it. I hit a curb doing 70 trying to impress a girl. Bent the frame and broke her heart (the girl & my mom). My 1st car was a 70 Duster with a slant six 225. Blew the motor 1st week I had it, driving it like I was in NASCAR on the highways. It's hard to kill an online six, but it was no match for my right foot. What can I say, I'm a product of my generation. Speed Racer, Knight Rider, Dukes of Hazzard, A-Team, Mannix, Gone In 60 Seconds (the ORIGINAL one!), Corvette Summer, Dirty Mary & Crazy Larry, Vanishing Point, Smokey & the Bandit, Magnum P.I., Hawaii 5-O (they squealed the tires in EVERY scene with a car in it). Between my family history, TV & the movies, I grew up believing life behind the wheel meant full throttle. Needless to say I've lost lots of 10mm & 3/8" sockets fixing my cars.
I have since owned & destroyed a slew of muscle cars in my day, including a handful of sleepers. It's fun spanking a GT mustang or a SS Monte with a hatchback Chevette! Slap on a set of deep dish rims and low profile 14s and they handle as well as a Corvette. But I digress.
My hall of shame includes a 65 Nova, 71 Chevelle, 76 Formula Firebird, 78 Camaro, 76 Monza Notchback, a pair of 77 Monza hatchbacks, a 69 Boss Mustang, a 78 El Camino, and numerous sedans, trucks and vans. Wrenched on every one of them, most were in dire need when I got them and almost every one of them saw their last mile with me as their pilot. I'd build them from the ground up then drive them back into the ground. I became known as a Voodoo Rocket Surgeon: resurrecting dead machines and making them fly, there was usually lots of cursing and swearing involved so it qualified as black magic!
Fast forward to 2018. I'm living on Panama City Beach, FLA at the time, having survived Hurricane Michael I saw a lot of locals pull up stakes & leave town. My little brother landed a job at a local taxi company as a mechanic. Having never run a garage before he tagged me to help out getting the shop sorted and cleaned up. (I worked as a maintenance man for a resort nearby). So I did, part time during the evenings and weekends. That turned into a 2nd full time gig, 4 hours a night 5 nights a week & 10 hours a day during weekends, wrenching on taxis, shuttle vans & limos.
We were allowed to work on outside vehicles on our off time, providing taxis came 1st, mostly the personal cars of the taxi drivers. Boss got 15% of the labor, parts mark up and $50 each for shop supplies. Enter Project Turd. Doggy doo brown and a real piece of ****. It was a 73 Newport more door with a laundry list of issues. Nothing worked, or didn't work right. The previous mechanic had taken it in as a side job. Hurricane Michael came thru and both the car owner & the mechanic left town. So we got it to start and run after rebuilding the carb and ignition, did a title search & sent a certified letter to the last registered owner asking what they wanted us to do with it. 30 days passed, no response. We waited an additional 15 days, then filed a mechanics lien against the title. Armed with a fresh green title, I stated throwing money into it. Initially my brother and I were gonna take the big block out of it and beef it up, make a hot rod dragster out of one of the Mopar minivan taxi's we had. He then found a 95 Trans Am to play with and the Turd was forgotten. But I'm a sucker for lost causes and saw the potential in this thing. It had a straight body and decent paint lurking under years of filth but not much else. I was the only thing standing between it and a junkyard crusher.
By this time, my wife had left for Texas to care for her sick mom (cancer), I'm alone so I spent all my free time with my brother fixing cars, & earning surplus funds to boot. And now I have something to spend it on. 2 years go by. Rebuilt motor and transmission, new brakes, front end, rear axle, rewired bumper to bumper, 2 tone paint job, muscle car rims and tires, lots of chrome and bling under the hood, custom touches everywhere: blacked out grill & headlight bezels, wire mesh grill, LED lighting. Everyone was impressed. Now my ma-in-law has passed and the wife tells me she's gonna stay in Texas to care for her elderly dad, do I join her or file divorce? I sell the house, hook up the Chrysler to a U-haul van and drag it halfway across the country.
It still needs rear springs, upholstery, and AC but it runs & drives real good. I even won a car show once. I don't make near the money as before so progress is slower. But I'm not done yet. It IS my retirement plan.
I've seen tricked out Lincoln's, Caddies, even full sized Chevy's & Buicks, but very few C-body Mopars. So this is my Dare-To-Be-Different hotrod. Muscle cars are rare and expensive these days, so I built one of my very own. That's how I came into this site and my car. I still call it the Turd, because it's doggy doo brown and it gets crappy mileage.
